46 Wiscoj2sin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters. 



WEALTH, CAPITAL AND CREDIT. 



By J. B. Parkinson, of Madison. 



Macleod in his "Theory and Practice of Banking" asks why 

 political economy has not yet attained the same rank as an exact 

 science as mechanics, and answers, " because the same care has 

 never yet been given to settle its deSnitionsand axioms." In this 

 answer we are furnished with but a fraction of the truth. A 

 di-eper reason is, its definitions and its axioms are far more difficult 

 of settlement than those pertaining to mechanics or to any of the 

 more exact sciences. 



Political economy labors under special disadvantages. Its close 

 relation to the moral sciences, whose circles certainly touch if they 

 do not overlap, brings it continually into contact with feelings and 

 prepossessions which are nearly sure to leave their impress upon 

 the discussion of its principles. Its conclusions, too, from the 

 very nature of the subject matter of which it treat?, have a direct 

 and visible beating upon human conduct in some of the most ex- 

 citing pursuits of life, while its technical terms by a sort of com- 

 pulsion are taken from the language of the people, and must 

 partake in a greater or less degree of the looseness of colloquial 

 usage. Its growth seems slower than it really is, for it belongs to 

 a class of sciences whose work can never end. The chief data 

 from which it reasons are human character and human institu- 

 tions, and whatever affects these must continually create new 

 problems for its solution. 



Of disputes about definitions there is no end. They are rife in 

 every science. In political economy they are especially so, and 

 chiefly for the reasons above stated. Disputes of this character 

 are usually harmless, and not uncommonly stale and nnprofiiable. 

 But there are economic questions of vital import, such as reach 

 to the very essence of things, about which we do not find that 

 harmony which would seem to be essential to healthy and rapid 

 progress. 



